nicroeg73 Reviews

Drifters (2011)

Badly scripted, badly filmed, boring celluloid disaster

[1/10 · 30 June 2023]

"Drifters" demonstrates perfectly why Italian cinema is awful nowadays. It is very sad to see that garbage like this is produced in a country which gave us Antonioni, Fellini, Rosi, Argento etc. The movie begins with three friends having lots of meaningless conversations then one of them disappears for half an hour, and the other - our main hero - is boring as hell. And that is the whole movie, this boring guy has boring conversations with his father, with his other friend and last but not least with Asia Argento who has the most interesting role but her figure is also underdeveloped like the script which should have been put right into the garbage after it was written. Finally we get two more pathetic scenes, one is a sex scene (unbelievably badly filmed, by the way), here the crew even manages to film Ms Giovanelli's butt the most boring way. The other is an even more pathetic journey in the city by car where the main boringguy, his father, his father's new wife and Ms Giovanelli (who looks like she has come from a Playboy photo shooting) sing awfully bad, guess what - an Eros Ramazzotti song.

One can rarely see such an awful script filmed - and filmed in such a boring way. Lots of dialogues try to hide the big nothing which was produced here. This is television soap with some amateurishly shot sex scenes, nothing more. Italian cinema, RIP.

Red Sparrow (2018)

Nothing interesting, below average spy story

[2/10 · 14 February 2023]

Red Sparrow begins quite interesting (and trashy) especially when Charlotte Rampling gets to the screen with a usual strong performance as a Russian spy-camp directress. But after that it is all downhill: the story gets slow and boring, Jennifer Lawrence shows only one expression on her face throughout and her wooden-faced CIA friend isn't any better. Jeremy Irons is wasted, there are lots of plot holes and the scene with the professional killer is extremely silly: if you manage to smash him in the face so that he lies on the ground you DON'T turn away from him. You use your advantage and kill him instantly. What was she taught in that camp for situations like this? And yes, there are good stories about Lawrence how she got naked for a couple of scenes but don't believe the hype: she shows some breasts but the rest was obviously done by a body double. I suggest you watch her in MOTHER! There she is great and that is also a much much better movie than this. Or if you like spy stories watch a James Bond or a Harry Palmer movie.

Get Out (I) (2017)

Below average rip-off - watch "The Skeleton Key" instead

[2/10 · 30 December 2022]

Poor Ehren Kruger. It had to be very tough for him to see Jordan Peele getting a screenplay Oscar for a script HE wrote originally with the title "The Skeleton Key". But the Oscars have always been a joke (especially in the last 20-22 years) so the so-called "Academy" thought that Peele's Oscar is not only a screenplay Oscar but also an "Original" screenplay Oscar. They obviously had someting against Mr. Kruger. And it is also very sad that a very well written script gets (currently) 6.5 and this overhyped rip-off is 7.7 which is better than Ari Aster's two masterworks, "Midsommar" and "Hereditary" which were the absolute highlights of the horror genre recently. I watched these two and "The Skeleton Key" a couple of times now and still find lots of class in them. Meanwhile "Get Out" is an absolutely average slasher pushed by hype, hype and hype.

Panna Nikt (1996)

One of the best movies ever about schoolgirls

[10/10 · 31 October 2022]

"Panna nikt" must be the most underrated movie ever about young schoolgirls. Where most of the moviegoers know the American-made movies in this genre ("Thirteen" and other forgettable.collections of clichés) this movie got absolutely no attention, even fans of Wajda see his war movies instead. But this is not the way it should be: "Panna nikt" has winning performances, great scenes after great scenes, a terrific score and a strange atmosphere which one could experience only while watching Andrzej Zulawski movies. It's very sad that Hollywood garbage have mostly at least a score of 6.0 even if the movie is garbage. "Panna nikt" is in this very moment 5.9! All in all one of the best movies ever about schoolgirls and schoolgirl rivalry.

Unseen (2020– )

Great series which is sadly unseen by people

[10/10 · 26 September 2022]

It is absolutely surprising that until this point there are no reviews for this fine little series. It is about a group of people in a small town whose life is changed when a big radio tower (or something like that) is built next to their houses. Some of the people move out of the town and plan a terrorist attack on the tower, others become invisible. Very well played and written and the abrupt ending is no deficit either because obviously there should have come the second season (no trace of that so far). Very welcome are also the "invisible" scenes with the logical nudity which is authentic, not the usual American CGI garbage put together by computers. Beside not having a second season it is also a shame that the first hasn't got a dvd release so far - it would be a definite buy.

After Fall, Winter (2011)

Very good romantic drama, ruined by the last act

[7/10 · 26 September 2022]

There are a few movies which are ruined by the last scene and AFTER FALL, WINTER is certainly one of them. The movie is well made, well acted by the two leads and it reaches an absolute catharsis in the sequence where the girl finally finds him and tries to free his head from the plastic bag. The music, cinematography, performances in this scene are world class and if this was the last scene the movie would be a masterpiece. It could have gone either way - a happy end, the girl arrives on time and sets him free, they live happily ever after; or she is late and he dies. But sadly Mr. Schaeffer adds one more scene, a terrible Romeo & Juliet rip-off where the girl hangs herself (why? She was a tough person, absolutely not suicidal) and then the guy wakes up (how? Even if he doesn't die immediately he should have been in coma because of lack of oxygen). I don't think that there wasn't anybody on the set who could have said "hey, this ending will bring the movie down". Or did Mr. Schaeffer simply want his character to stay alive?

The Night Belongs to Lovers (2021)

Very erotic French movie

[10/10 · 6 September 2022]

"La nuit aux amants" is a very erotic, very French movie. The viewer gets two good performances, two nice bodies - and an interesting story which becomes quite shocking in the end and not only from a sexual point of view. Good to see that erotic movies - with explicit sex and nudity but also with a story and well-written characters - are still being made (at least in Europe, the US is hopeless for this genre). Forget "365" and other overhyped unerotic Netflix garbage, see "La nuit aux amants" instead. There is a very good (and rare) German dvd of this movie, try to get it, it is worth the money.

Benedetta (2021)

Nothing new

[4/10 · 11 August 2022]

Entertaining trash from start to finish (as usual from Verhoeven), the movie has one big flaw: it's not original. The movie basically tries to sell nunsploitation, torture to the new generation of moviegoers who don't watch movies from the seventies where everything you see in "Benedetta" was already done. The strong-willed nun - take for example FLAVIA THE HERETIC. The graphic torture scene - we saw the same scene in LOVE LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN. And so on, nothing new. The leading lady is unfortunately below average, Daphné Patakia is a much better actress (although she is naked almost in the whole movie - interestingly Verhoeven fails to film anything erotic here, Patakia's much less number of nude scenes in DJAM were far more erotic).

Rampling and Wilson are the best thing in the cast though, all the others are bland and forgettable. The music is also terribly forgettable, they don't use melodies anymore, only the usual Hollywood crap disguised as a score, anybody could have written that.

To sum up, it is entertaining but sadly unoriginal. Boring leading actress, terrible CGI, good supporting actors, predictable script. You may watch FLAVIA with the great Florinda Bolkan, or STORY OF A CLOISTERED NUN instead.

Beijo na Boca (1982)

Very effective erotic crime story

[10/10 · 10 June 2022]

"Beijo..." is much better than lots of other erotic Brasilian movies from the seventies-eighties but sadly it looks like nobody has seen it. It's a pity because Ohana is in top form, she is naked all the way but she can act as well. And the director (almost) succeeds in putting the erotic scenes everywhere in the movie not only in the first 20 minutes. It would be definitely worth having a European dvd release of this movie.

Quartet (2015 TV Movie)

Another great movie without a dvd release

[10/10 · 15 February 2022]

Well written, well filmed, erotic period piece, much better than similar-themed movies which are shown in cinemas to a wider audience. Creton shows her talent, the big question is why she is still not a big star like Cotillard. Another big question is, why this has no dvd release - considering the fact that lots of junk get released, even on bluray.

Nus et célèbres (2005 Video)

Great for voyeurs

[10/10 · 21 December 2021]

French show which features six boys and six girls who talk into the camera about themselves then strip. The winner of the whole thing is My Linh Luu (as Anna) who has a beautiful body and voice. Do these 93 minutes have the quality of "The Godfather" or "The Piano"? Definitely not. Do voyeurs find here what they look for? Absolutely!

The Shape of Water (2017)

Unoriginal Hollywood-junk, written after watching E.T.

[2/10 · 22 November 2021]

The Shape of Water features a mute woman (boring: Sally Hawkins) who works as a cleaning woman in a super-secret laboratory where there are cameras everywhere, but not in the most important room, where a creature is held captured. So the cleaning woman has plenty of time to have a party there and she finds out that since the creature accepted an egg from her, she should release it and let it back to water.

There is also a bad government guy (Michael Shannon, in a one-note "I am so evil" performance) who thinks that instead of chasing the car which has just escaped (the creature is inside the car) he should go back to the super-secret building and question the other employees where the creature can be.

These and other stupidities are the main part of this Oscar-winning (who cares, nowadays every bad movie gets one or two nominations - or even 13) movie, in which I had big hopes, since "Pan's Labyrinth" was a masterwork. But this time it is all Hollywood-idiocy from Del Toro: the plot is an R-rated version of E. T. (creature befriends main hero, creature gets sick, bad guys want to experiment on creature, main hero releases creature), the performances are boring, all the scenes are predictable. Del Toro even adds a b&w dream sequence, just because the Oscar-nominee "Talk to Her" (2002) also had one.

And the creature? Well, it is the most boring thing in the movie. It basically does nothing, just giving out some typical Hollywood laptop-sound, but it is enough for the cleaning woman to have sex with it. Also there is the usual gay supporting role, an older guy whose work is not accepted by his employer anymore, so he does not look for a new job, no. He finds that he has to help the mute woman in escaping the creature from a super-secret military base. A base, which has no chasing cars, and where there are no cameras in the most important room of the whole place.

And there are some Russian agents as well, one of them secretly holds a knife in his hand because he suspects that the other two agents might want to kill him. But later, as they stand face-to-face, he does not suspect anything, so he gets shot.

Yes, the screenplay of this movie is this bad: unbeliavably big logic holes, silliness, unoriginality and within every scene the forced message towards the Academy: please give us as many Oscars as possible.

Home for the Holidays (1995)

Plotless, brainless

[1/10 · 19 July 2021]

Almost plotless movie, in which a bunch of unsympathetic characters do and say stupid things on an extended family meeting. Maybe Altman could have done something with the material, but sadly Foster is not in his league, even the opening key scene - where Holly Hunter loses her job - is completely ruined by bad writing. No laughs, no comedy, only some big names who get no direction whatsoever. Horrible.

The Edge (2010)

Amateurishly made nonsense

[2/10 · 19 July 2021]

La lisière is an amateurishly made movie with awful dialogue and the actors sometimes just stand and stare at each other with no direction whatsoever. The actors in the scenes say one sentence, then stare at the others, or, as in one of the many laughable sequences (the main character drives one of the city girls home), don't say anything, although they should have to. Not very authentic (I guess that was the purpose), but mostly incompetent.

The Bedroom Window (1987)

Miles better than today's garbage, so-called "thrillers"

[10/10 · 27 May 2021]

Great script, great writing, this is a thriller which would be ruined nowadays by idiotic jump scares and shock effects. But this was made by Curtis Hanson who understood his job pretty well. Plenty of excitement, great twists and the story is absolutely logical. The only question is why the rating is so low, 6,4 looks laughable considering that it is way better than today's garbage with overrated Tarantino movies for example, which of course are on the top 100 list - as a big joke. But it looks like brainless violence is needed for today's moviegoers.

The Governess (1998)

A big disappointment

[2/10 · 22 February 2021]

Extremely disappointing drama about a woman who is hired to teach the little girl of a rich house. Why she is hired, no one knows, since she doesn't even use her real name and has no teaching experience. But that is only the start of a very boring love story where there is absolutely no chemistry between the two leads and the erotic scenes are even more boring. Supporting characters are weak also (check the wife, we can feel very sorry for the actress who played her, she has simply no role to play). The director tried to be the new Jane Campion here, but failed on every level.

Climax (1977)

Absolutely underrated - where is the dvd?

[10/10 · 1 February 2021]

Climax (1977) is a very very underrated movie, well filmed, erotic and in the end dramatic. Better than Christiane F. and much much better than Hanna - Girl from the Vondel Park, but those 2 movies are out on dvd. So if you are lucky you can get a TV version of this movie, you won't regret it.

Newness (2017)

Overlong, badly filmed

[2/10 · 17 January 2021]

This is an overlong, boring movie about 2 people who constantly cheat on each other. We see their arguing in awfully forced scenes, f. e. they almost kill each other because he does not want to speak about his sister and she can not accept it. So what to do in cases like this? It's simple: let's watch each other flirting with others then tell about how it was having sex with that third person and finally let's have sex again with each other. Yes, it could have been a fun, perverse and sexy movie, but it isn't: 2 idiots do stupid things and in the end it's always the same story, somebody is having sex with somebody. After a while it is quite boring, especially when the 2 characters become even more stupid as time goes by. And the movie is very badly filmed, the constantly moving camera is dilettante, the whole movie is almost always in the dark, the sex scenes are also conservative, boring and way too few, despite the fact the whole thing is about sex.

Lady Bird (2017)

Nothing new

[2/10 · 14 January 2021]

Lady Bird is an absolutely overrated movie. This is the kind of film that has been made a dozen times in Europe (especially in Germany) and way better. There are two good scenes only, the first is a meeting about abortion the second is a clash between mother and daughter where the latter asks her to write down the expenses of her childhood so that as an adult she can pay her back. That's about it, all the other stuff is just the usual Hollywood nonsense with the usual awful music, the stereotype fat girlfriend, the musician boyfriend (by the way only an idiot could think that he is a virgin), the "very" believable bra-on sex scene and endless copying of Woody Allen (see Frances Ha, a shameless Manhattan rip-off). Nothing new, nothing original but lucky for Greta, she is the new favourite of the Academy. Itwould be time for her to write something original.

Mr. Nobody (2009)

Awfully bad

[1/10 · 14 January 2021]

Mr. Nobody is a terrible movie, the worst kind of those which are made today (mostly in Hollywood). The story is idiotic, nonsense, takes itself very-very seriously and of course ends with simply nothing. Sadly there are lots of people (see imdb's 7.8 rating which is better than f.e. "Werk ohne Autor, a true masterpiece of recent years) who in the end think that they have just seen something, which will become a classic. No, it's not the case. Mr. Nobody is the perfect example of a movie that wants everything in every minute. Writer-director Van Dormael (whose "The Brand New Testament" was also a disaster) has nothing interesting/new to say, no coherent story, just throwing everything into the moviegoers' face in the hope that they will buy it. Every 5 minutes a big farewell, meeting scene, every genre possible, awful dialog and a story which is on a 5 year old's level. And then the most important thing: the packing of all this. Expensive visual effects a'la Hollywood which are there with the purpose of hiding the fact that there is simply nothing in the movie, only emptiness. Van Dormael is clever, he simply copies the Jeunet style, because "Amélie" was a huge hit (and also zero story in professional packing), maybe people will buy his copy as well (if we check the budget + gross of Mr. Nobody, we see that luckily they did not). The actors try their best but they are hoplessly lost in this mixture of pointless scenes, all of which try to reach the last 5 minutes of "Casablanca". Even the usually great Sarah Polley is awful in a very limited role (she also has a painfully bad scene where she imitates a dog); the actors mentioned in the credits can be grateful that their part was cut out. Make no mistake, Mr. Nobody is pure garbage: endless visual effects, idiotic ending (we are in a 9-year-old's mind, oh yes, the - strictly PG - sex scenes as well) shameless plagiarism (see "Little Big Man" (1970) ) made for making money the easiest way and collect some prizes. In the 60's and 70's we had in Europe masters like Fellini, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Roeg, Losey (who did not have the chance to use some idiotic visual effects created by a laptop)... now we have Van Dormael. Thanks, but no.

World War Z (2013)

Below average

[3/10 · 14 January 2021]

The movie begins well, basically the beginning is the best thing in the whole film. Then Pitt becomes a superhero and the plot holes and stupidity start to flow: USA, the whole country is only able to send two persons against a deadly plague, one of them is a retired guy (Pitt). Where are the special forces, experts etc.? Sitting at home, watching "Dawn of the Dead"? The marines in Korea just happen to forget to cover their arms and feet, why? Interestingly, superhero Pitt does cover his arms later. In Israel the army has a big wall, hundreds of soldiers inside, but no one has the idea to put cameras at the top of the walls just to see that the zombis will get on top of each other. And then of course the soldiers (and their bosses) forget to throw some bombs (hand grenades, anything) from the top of the wall down to the zombies. Nobody is on the top of the wall, the soldiers are inside, they seem to enjoy the singing and dancing of the refugees there. How romantic! Pitt and a soldier woman crash with the plane but after a bit of walking...look, there is the WHO building! Nice and exact landing! We have to go to 80 zombies to get some samples. Who do we send (beside superhero Pitt)? Of course, the one-armed soldier woman! Great idea. Ladys first. With World war Z, as we can see, we have the same old story from Hollywood, extremely characteristic for the last 20 years: they have a basically good idea, but they simply don't develop it, because the cash should flow in as soon as possible. The script should have been supervised, more people should have been involved to throw in ideas and tell what simply does not work in the written pages. No, the idiots in Hollywood quickly give the green light for scripts which are less than half developed. Let's get the cash! Pitt as superhero will get the crowds into the cinema the other half will come because we have such genius special effects! And we can hardly wait for the gross of the opening weekend! And if there is a lot of money, we will make the sequel!

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Only questions

[1/10 · 5 January 2021]

This terrible sequel raises only questions. Why does Goldblum not know about his girlfriend's job on the island? Why did she not tell him? Was this job not important or just a usual thing? "Honey I did not want to bother you with my new job on an island full of dinosaurs." Why does Goldblum's daughter hide in the truck? Why doesn't she go home instead and play with a nintendo or with her girlfriends? What is her role in the movie? Because i did not see any, or at least not written. What is the motivation of Pete Postlethwaite's character? Why is Postlethwaite badly miscast? Why do the mercenaries get up because of a dinosaur attack and all forget to pick up their weapons? What kind of job did they do previously? Took care of a kindergarten? Why does one of the mercenaries listen to music from a walkman if in any moment a wild animal can jump on him from the bushes? What was the point on Peter Stormare's character? Just to show that the little dinosaurs can also kill a human and Koepp did not want to kill the little girl from the beginning of the movie? How can Goldblum's daughter kick out a dinosaur out of the window? Why do the T-Rexes leave while Goldblum and co. are in the truck that hangs over the abyss? The T-Rexes started to push the truck, why did they stop and leave? And then why did they come back? Why is the whole ending an idiotic King Kong rip-off? Why was Sam Neill a genius not to be in this movie? Because it is pure garbage. Was William Goldman a genius as he stated "Sequels are whores' movies"? Yes, he was.

The Handmaiden (2016)

Absolutely forgettable

[1/10 · 5 January 2021]

Part 1 is an extremely boring tale about a girl who wants to trick her mistress. Part 2 is the same extremely boring stuff from the mistress's point of view. The director then spices the whole thing with some lesbian sex scenes (he obviously saw "Blue is the Warmest Colour" and tried to copy that movie for the sex), which are the most boring thing in the movie. There is a little bit of sadism but for that see "Audition" instead which is a great film. And Part 3 has some twists, lots of plot holes and is completely forgettable. Overall, the biggest question about this movie how it got to the list of top ranked movies.

Hut in the Woods (2011)

After a good first half it falls apart

[3/10 · 30 December 2020]

This is a very promising movie in the first half but the question is, which direction the script will go in the second half. And there comes a big surprise twist, but the twist is just the usual "he is there but in reality he is not there"-cliche - how disappointing. And it all goes downhill from there: the girl who simply leaves her job and life just because she met a homeless man who told her some nice things about living in the desert without electricity, now this has simply no credibility. Also the ending is just stupid, it's the old idiotic crime movie cliche of "I see you in the newspaper and I call the cops" - very-very weak for an ending, especially when the movie started with great realism of the ruined life of the main hero. Overall a great disappointment, because of the first half I would rate this 5/10 but it is way overrated here (great European movies have a rating of 6.6 - 6.8 and this one 7.0, which is laughable), so it is 3/10.